Course Details

Course offered Autumn 2009

Honors 251 F: Sex, Gender and Representation in Greek and Roman Literature

Honors 251 F: Sex, Gender and Representation in Greek and Roman Literature

SLN 19430 (View UW registration info »)

Stephen Hinds (Classics)
Office: 262 Denny, Box 353110
Phone: 206 543-2266
Email: shinds@uw.edu

Credits: 5
Limit: 30 students

Honors Credit Type

***COURSE FULL***
The aim of this course is to consider the kinds of stories that ancient Greeks and Romans tell in their canonical literary texts about human interpersonal experience, with special reference to the dynamics of sex and gender in the individual and in society. The focus will be less on the details of lived reality than on the worlds of myth, fiction and tendentious self-representation through which Greek and Roman writers and readers push the envelope of everyday life and explore larger worlds of identity, desire and the imagination.

The course presupposes no prior study of what we know as ‘classical antiquity’, but offers participants the opportunity to explore a formative period of Western civilization through consideration of some of its most characteristic texts and ideas. At the same time, the approach through sex, gender and representation allows some of the most current emphases in the modern study of the humanities to be applied to these two-millennium-old (and older) texts, so that this is a very 21st century introduction to, and critique of, key elements in ancient Greek and Roman literature and culture.

Specific areas addressed will include the affirmation and inversion in literature of culturally agreed gender roles; myths of male and female identity and self-fashioning; the marginalization and reclamation of female consciousness; and the ‘rules of engagement’ in ancient love poems and narratives of sexual encounter, in which gender, status and sexual preference are all inextricably bound up together.

Works read in prescribed English translation, wholly or in part, will include Homer’s epic Odyssey, Euripides’ tragic Medea, Plato’s philosophical Symposium, Ovid’s mythic Metamorphoses, Longus’ prose romance Daphnis & Chloe, and selected short poems by Sappho, Anacreon, Theognis, and Catullus. These and other texts, spanning a range of genres of ancient literature, will be read closely for their aesthetic and artistic qualities, placed in their cultural and ideological contexts, and considered for their impact upon later ages, including our own.

The focus throughout will be on the close interpretation of literary texts, with participants required to read and respond to a broad range of primary readings (by ancient authors) and a limited number of secondary readings (by contemporary scholars), in discussion and in writing. There will be two exams, each of which will include passages for ID and discussion, and more extended essay questions on topics assigned ahead of time. There will be one term paper or equivalent writing project; in addition, short written responses to course materials will be required at various points during the term.